Funworld May 2010

by Jeremy Schoolfield

Every year in the days and weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, the Walt Disney World Resort undergoes a massive decorative transformation for the holiday season. The Orlando destination’s Holiday Services department hangs 15 miles of garland, turns 300,000 yards of ribbon into bows, and hangs nearly 8.5 million lights.

Those lights underwent a transformation of their own over the past three years as Disney World (http://disneyworld.disney.go.com) rid itself of almost all its traditional incandescent bulbs and transitioned to new LED lights. For the 2009 season, fewer than 200,000 of those 8.5 million lights remained incandescent—or just 2 percent.

What made LEDs so appealing? There are many good reasons, from cost savings to maintenance improvements to environmental impact and more. FUNWORLD spoke with Disney and several other experts in the fields of lighting and holiday décor to discover why LED is becoming a must-see in the attraction industry.

Cost vs. Energy Savings
“LED” stands for “Light Emitting Diode,” which is a semiconductor light source that uses solid-state chips to convert energy into light without the use of filaments. “A lot of the energy used by incandescent lights is wasted through heating up the filament,” says Stuart Watt, vice president of sales for Manitowoc, Wisconsin-based Christmas U.S.A., which specializes in commercial decorative lighting (www.christmasusa.com). “Conversely, the majority of the electrical energy produced by LEDs goes directly toward generating light.”

Disney says it saves 90 percent on energy costs with LEDs versus incandescents, and the LEDs last 10 times as long, to boot. Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark (www.tivoli gardens.com), saves 60,000 kilowatt hours by changing the 2,800 holiday bulbs on its Chinese pagoda from incandescent to LED, says park spokesperson Ellen Dahl. Tivoli started using LEDs in 2006; about 10 percent of the park’s lights are LED now, Dahl says, and that number increases every year.

Though the initial cost of an LED light set can be twice as high as an incandescent or more, the return on investment is definitely there, these lighting experts agree. Watt says attractions would see LED light sets pay for themselves through energy cost savings of 80 percent to 90 percent and by lasting up to 10 times longer than incandescent light sets.

“If you look at a five-year ROI, it made sense because you know there’s going to be savings on a maintenance end,” says Lisa Borotkanics, manager of Disney World’s Holiday Services department.

Durability Means Less Maintenance
Anyone who’s ever decorated a Christmas tree knows the frustration of dealing with incandescent lights that will break, burn out, or just switch off seemingly of their own volition. LEDs take all that pain and suffering away, apparently.

“You’re not going lose one and have to do that terrible thing where you search through [the entire string] to find the light that’s burned out,” says Shawn Boyle, lighting designer for New York-based entertainment firm RWS and Associates (www.rwsandassociates.com). LED lights use solid-state components and plastic casings, so they are much sturdier than incandescents using glass bulbs and filaments, Watt says.

Borotkanics can attest. For years her army of holiday decorators hand checked every incandescent bulb before heading out to set up, yet still the filaments in glass bulbs could get damaged on the short journey from warehouse to décor destination. And that was just getting them where they were supposed to go—more maintenance problems ensued during the installation process and through normal wear and tear of a holiday season. LEDs cured most of those headaches, she says. “We didn’t have all that maintenance once we were installing, and then we maybe had one-tenth of the maintenance during the season. It was very minor compared to the incandescents.”

There are long-term benefits, too, she says: Before, incandescents at Disney World were replaced every three years, whereas now LEDs won’t need changing for up to six years. It’s important to keep good track of these maintenance schedules, Boyle says, because LEDs won’t just burn out when they’ve reached the end of their lifespan. Instead, they dim over time, which means it’s less obvious which diodes need replacing just by looking at them.

Disney World does have moisture to deal with in its humid, wet climate, which can cause the LEDs to short out. As a result Borotkanics uses sealed LED light strands all across the resort to keep the dampness out.

LED Look/Feel Improving
When LEDs first hit the market nearly a decade ago, one major complaint was the lights’ tone. “When you use a diode versus an incandescent, you lose the warmth, the luminescence around the bulb,” Borotkanics says. “It’s a bit of a different feel.”

LEDs have a harsher, bluer, more jeweled look to them, rather than the soft, warm reflective light of traditional incandescents. “I like the glow of the incandescent, because there’s something about its reflection against the tree. An LED is kind of a dead brightness,” says Leslie Wasem, president and CEO of Harlan’s Trim-It-Quick, a new type of hassle-free tree-trimming system (see sidebar). “But they’re getting better at softening the brightness of LEDs. The warm white is at the point where it won’t blast you with that bluish white; it looks pretty natural.”

Colors are improving, too, Watt says, and new sets feature super bright LED lights. “The colors you get from them are absolutely beautiful,” Boyle says. His colleague Joey Wartnerchaney, an effects designer for RWS, says because LEDs are so much brighter, they allow for bigger impact and saturation of light and color than with traditional bulbs; that means money spent on LEDs goes farther in wow factor, too.

LED twinkle lights still aren’t up to Disney standards at this point, however. “They’re getting better, but originally when they came out they were more like blinkles,” jokes Borotkanics. “They didn’t give you that time-old tradition of the twinkle light everyone loves.”

Boyle also cites theatrical dimming as a problem for the new lighting technology. He says dimming is excellent from full brightness down to 10 percent, but then the diodes just wink out abruptly as opposed to a full gradual black out.

So Cool
There is a safety benefit to LEDs, as well, because they generate very little heat versus incandescent lights. “LED lights are cool to the touch and safer to use,” Watt says.

“We provide a residential décor package in a commercial environment,” says Borotkanics. The goal is to make people feel like they’re right at home at Disney World—it’s inviting, “and now that we’re with LED, you don’t have to worry about children touching the bulbs and being burned.”

Only Getting More Popular
If this article is somehow your first blush with LEDs (doubtful), it certainly won’t be your last. Watt says the lighting business is moving toward a more general LED culture. “It’s starting to move and convert at a pretty good pace,” he says. “Consumer awareness is greater than it was even a few years ago. They understand the benefits and savings.”

“Right now you’re seeing the LEDs everywhere. The suppliers know people really want them. It’s a much greater and wiser investment,” agrees Borotkanics, but she has this word of warning: “Wherever you live, the environment is different, so test, test, test. Don’t just buy and implement.” Contact Senior Editor Jeremy Schoolfield at jschoolfield@IAAPA.org.